Census frequency

A proposal to shift to a 10-year census could seriously affect Christchurch’s recovery, critics say.

Statistics Minister Maurice Williamson said in July 2011 the Government was considering holding the census once every decade.

Currently conducted every five years, the census helps determine electoral boundaries and funding for services like district health boards, schools and the police.

I’m not sure how a comment made 18 months ago is a news story today, unless there has been some more recent development.

Labour earthquake recovery spokeswoman Lianne Dalziel said Christchurch was already living with the consequences of a delayed census.

“I’m not criticising the delay that we’ve had because obviously it was done for the right reasons. We would have got a very distorted view if it had gone ahead in 2011.”

However, delaying the census by two years did cause problems, particularly for this year’s local body elections, she said.

“The election will be based on boundaries that aren’t where people are living. I think that’s going to be a bit of a shake-up,” she said.

“I’d really want to see a good case put up for a delay. We’ve had the schools shake-up landed on the city without the benefit of knowledge about where the settlement patterns are going to fall and that’s wrong.”

Labour statistics spokesman Raymond Huo said a 10-yearly census would reduce costs to Statistics New Zealand, but it was “not that straightforward”.

“I think [Williamson’s] idea is half-baked at best because it’s not that simple,” he said.

“The key drivers are cost constraints and the demand for more frequent detailed and accurate statistics. Particularly for the Christchurch area, we need more frequent and accurate data.”

I agree with Dalziel and Huo that a move from five to 10 years is not desirable. I’m a bit biased as I am a frequent and large user of census data, but I think it would impact many areas of activity.

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Comments (10)

Michael

I’m not sure that the census is entirely valid – I refuse to answer half the question in it as they are not relevant (or should not be relevant) to Government. I’ve yet to receive any contact from stats about this.

aitkenmike

kk – It will (I assume) be possible to fill out the census online this year. I was a census deliverer/collector for the aborted attempt in 2011 and it was going to be an option then, and the training emphasised that we should push the online option as much as possible. I filled my own out early (can’t remember if this was a test or if online gave you the option of logging in prior to the actual date) and it worked really well, and was suprisingly well designed and intuitive to use for a first time live site.

Britain and the US seem to manage just fine with one every ten years, I can’t for the life of me understand why having one every five is such a complete necessity. In fact, I’m not sure why they are necessary at all in the modern age.